Ain't No In Between

Look here, son, Cap told my brother impatiently, you're either at the table or on the menu. Ain't no in between. So get in the damn boat or let go the rope.

It had taken weeks of coaxing, gentle persuasion and finally a crisp new twenty dollar bill to get Cap to agree to take us out lobstering with him. Nana had manipulated, nagged, bargained and finally bribed him into saying yes but at the last minute, faced with the small fishing boat and a very wide expanse of open ocean, my brother was having second thoughts. Cap was anxious to be underway - We're burnin' daylight here, boy! he growled - and he felt saddled with the unwanted responsibility of two children. It made him short tempered, testy, and more convinced than ever that we'd get underfoot and cause some unholy damage. After another few minutes of the standoff, he shrugged and with one covert gesture had latched onto my brother's overall straps, lifted him with ease, and deposited him into the boat. Sit, he told us, and don't be touchin' anythin' or I'll throw you both over the side. We had no doubt that he meant what he said.

With no further delay, Cap headed for open water. The island grew more and more distant til it was barely a speck on the horizon and there was no other land to be seen. It was a fine day on a relatively calm ocean. Cap and crew began the difficult chore of pulling traps and to my surprise, I learned that live lobsters were greenish black, not red as I had always imagined. Some were small and tossed back, some were oversized, most were average. The sun was warm but the men wore heavy gloves and long sleeves and didn't seem to sweat. They worked with very little conversation and no breaks, hauling a trap and emptying it, then rebaiting it and throwing it back. Cap smoked and supervised, his eyes constantly on the skies and the surrounding sea, as if on alert against a sudden change of wind or the approach of a dark cloud. It took hours to fill the hold and all the while my brother and I sat and watched, hungry and restless, and slowly realizing that the life of a lobsterman was not as romantic or as daring as we had thought.

The sun was high in the sky when Cap called it a day and we turned for home. We hadn't seen a shark as we'd hoped but as we drew nearer to the passage we did see a colony of seals - they were bright, shiny creatures with long whiskers and huge eyes, splashing and cawing and lazing on the rocks. When one of the crew produced a rifle, Cap shook his head, Not this trip, he said softly, Not with the young'uns aboard. The seals were spared that day.

In some things, there is an in between.